Abortion in Early Modern Italy

John Christopoulos

Published by Harvard University Press 2021

Abortion in Early Modern Italy

John Christopoulos

In the series I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History

https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674249387

Overview
Contents

About this book

A comprehensive history of abortion in Renaissance Italy.

In this authoritative history, John Christopoulos provides a provocative and far-reaching account of abortion in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy. Drawing on portraits of women who terminated—or were forced to terminate—pregnancies, he finds that Italians maintained a fundamental ambivalence about abortion, despite injunctions from civil and religious authorities. Italians from all levels of society sought, had, and participated in abortions. Early modern Italy was not an absolute anti-abortion culture, an exemplary Catholic society centered on the “traditional family.” Rather, Christopoulos shows, Italians held many views on abortion, and their responses to its practice varied.

Bringing together medical, religious, and legal perspectives alongside a social and cultural history of sexuality, reproduction, and the family, Christopoulos offers a nuanced and convincing account of the meanings Italians ascribed to abortion and shows how prevailing ideas about the practice were spread, modified, and challenged. Christopoulos begins by introducing readers to prevailing medical ideas about abortion and women’s bodies, describing the widely available purgative medicines and surgeries that various healers and women themselves employed to terminate pregnancies. He also explores how these ideas and practices ran up against and shaped theology, medicine, and law. Catholic understanding of abortion was changing amid religious, legal, and scientific debates concerning the nature of human life, women’s bodies, and sexual politics. Christopoulos examines how ecclesiastical, secular, and medical authorities sought to regulate abortion, and how tribunals investigated and punished its procurers—or didn’t, even when they could have.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction: The Meanings of Abortion Requires Authentication Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Abortion and Women’s Bodies Requires Authentication Licensed Download PDF	46
Rosana and Giovanni Requires Authentication Licensed Download PDF	103
2. Abortion and the Church Requires Authentication Licensed Download PDF	107
Femia and Antino Requires Authentication Licensed Download PDF	172
3. Abortion and the Law Requires Authentication Licensed Download PDF	185
Maria and Superio Requires Authentication Licensed Download PDF	236
Conclusion Requires Authentication Licensed Download PDF	247
NOTES Requires Authentication Licensed Download PDF	259
BIBLIOGRAPHY Requires Authentication Licensed Download PDF	339
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Requires Authentication Licensed Download PDF	351
INDEX Requires Authentication Licensed Download PDF	355

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Pages
- Main content: 352

eBook

Published: January 20, 2021
ISBN: 9780674249387